Thomas Brown's Blog, page 5
March 4, 2015
Monarch-Man
Originally posted on Pen of the Damned:
“I am a winged creature who is too rarely allowed to use its wings. Ecstasies do not occur often enough.” Anais Nin
It has gone midnight when I cross the park but he is quite visible by the street lamp. Stick limbs. Wild hair. The sickly-sweet scent of honey. He is filthy and beautiful, this Monarch-Man, my Emperor of Flies.
I have been following him for months now. Sometimes it feels like my whole life has been lost to his search. Rather, it has been lost to my search for him. He takes no part in my hunt. I would be surprised if he knew that I sought him at all. But I had, I have; from the first moment I set eyes on him, crawling from the tube station.
I alone watched him tumble through the turnstiles and into the street. He reached the curb on his side…
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February 26, 2015
Damned Words 11
I love to read where our different minds have taken us. Collective flash fiction inspired by one image from Pen of the Damned: DAMNED WORDS 11.
Originally posted on Pen of the Damned:
A Reason
Joseph A. Pinto
I found a reason to walk tween the folds of winter’s shawl, so hand in hand go we along Perdition’s Road. Shall we burn, we burn as one; shall we suffer, then know love cores the depths of our wounds. Lace your trembling fingers round my neck and your burdens I shall carry. I’ve no need to burn this lantern’s oils for our demons come well-known. Let them swirl in the dark, guttering til gone. Death is tenant of our path, yet tonight she’ll know no coin. My life I mortgage for yours; take flight now against my sky.
Nightfall
Nina D’Arcangela
Torn and bloodied, she huddles against the lantern’s pedestal fighting for a life already lost. Broken in spirit, broken in heart, she watches as they circle, awaiting night’s fall. Not taken on the last, she knows this eve she’ll not be so lucky…
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February 15, 2015
“If the writing is honest…”
“If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it. It isn’t so much his mirror as it is the distillation, the essence, of what is strongest and purest in his nature, whether that be gentleness or anger, serenity or torment, light or dark. This makes it deeper than the surface likeness of a mirror and that much more truthful.”
— from “New Selected Essays: Where I Live” by Tennessee Williams
February 11, 2015
The Spectral Book of Horror Stories Vol. 2: submissions open
Originally posted on Spectral Press:
Mark Morris has just announced the following:
“I’m pleased to announce that THE 2ND SPECTRAL BOOK OF HORROR STORIES is now open to submissions! Stories can be any length (though the preferred length is 2000-8000 words) and payment is £20 per 1000 words, up to a maximum of £100, which means that if you submit a story that’s over 5000 words it will be on the understanding that you’ll be giving us those additional words for free. The closing date for submissions is June 30th, and the book will be launched at FantasyCon in October. Due to the volume of stories I’m expecting to receive over the next few months it may take a while for me to get back to you, and my responses may, by necessity, be brief (I have my own writing deadlines to meet, after all). All submissions should be sent to
spectralhorror2@gmail.com
and…
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January 31, 2015
4. Weird Fiction
“The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror.” – Thomas Ligotti
Before the niche categorisation of horror fiction there was weird fiction. Predating the tropes, clichés and genre-centric motifs that would come to define a piece of literature as horror, science fiction or fantasy, weird writing was an amalgam of all these things. In many instances, works of weird fiction actually established said tropes for the first time, before their eventual distillation under the genre-umbrellas we recognise today. As it sits critically between the gothic fiction of the eighteenth century and contemporary horror, it therefore represents an important stepping-stone in the evolution of my subject matter.
Weird fiction’s predilections were less romanticised than those of its gothic fiction predecessor. This is unsurprising, given the changed nature of the times in which it was penned. The concerns of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were, naturally, different to those of the eighteenth century. Themes of religion and God still persisted but they were joined by other, more progressive interests and questions, not least the sciences, rising tensions for race, ethnicity, class, and man’s subsequent place in the universe. As with most fin-de-siècle societies, these were turbulent times with regards to philosophy and existentialism. It is no surprise, then, that these themes feature extensively as the subject of weird fiction. This kind of speculative writing lent itself beautifully to the exploration of new ideas, emerging concepts and the unknown. It is also no surprise that such vast, overarching ideas translated into the sublime. What is of interest is the form this sublime takes.
One common theme across almost all interpretations of the sublime is its association with divinity. An individual witnesses something so overwhelming and unfathomable that they cannot comprehend it. Their mind is defeated, and in that moment of defeat gives rise to a feeling for something transcendental, beyond conscious thought or language. Traditionally, this is interpreted as God. Longinus refers to the oratorical sublime “inspir[ing] and possess[ing] our words with a kind of madness and divine spirit” in the first century CE. Addison and Shaftsbury differ over their musings into the nature of the sublime but are unified in their agreement that God is the ultimate source. I could go on! What interests me about weird fiction is the appearance of themes and characters that challenge this.
For the first time, fiction blended science with the supernatural: mathematics, not magic, gave rise to portals. Monsters became the biological products of interracial fears. Gods still featured but these were monstrous, indifferent beings, dead or sleeping, sources of the sublime still but far removed from benevolence. This kind of sublime could not inspire transcendence, or, if it could, it was a much different kind of enlightenment, the results of which saw more than a handful of Lovecraft’s protagonists reduced to madness.
“What lay behind our joint love of shadows and marvels was, no doubt, the ancient, mouldering, and subtly fearsome town in which we live – witch-cursed, legend-haunted Arkham, whose huddled, sagging gambrel roofs and crumbling Georgian balustrades brood out the centuries beside the darkly muttering Miskatonic.” — HP Lovecraft
If there is a point at which the relationship between horror fiction and the sublime more closely begins to resemble its contemporary marriage, when the sublime abandons its reliance on such overarching concepts as nature or religion, it is here, amid the sagging, downtrodden streets of Lovecraft’s fiction, and those of his contemporaries. Huddled under sunken doorframes, hiding out the driving rain, we witness for the first time a glimpse of postmodern sublime in early horror literature.
January 13, 2015
LaLupa
Dark, beautiful fiction from Magenta Nero.
Originally posted on Pen of the Damned:
It’s that time of month again and rent is due. Evening is falling fast, drowning the city in dark hues of purple. I’m starting to get a little edgy, a little nervous, as I walk to work. Every night is my first night, every night is my last night.
From outside it looks like any other exclusive strip club. Black painted walls and door, no signs, no neon. I’ve certainly done a lot worse. At least there are no homeless junkies sleeping out front.
The guy at the door gives me the once over and a nod of approval.
“Have a good night sweetheart,” he says politely as he opens the door for me. He has a neck like a tree trunk, a black tee shirt clings to pumped up muscle.
***
Inside it’s tasteful enough. The furnishings are plush red and black. Not too big a space, which…
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December 29, 2014
Thank You
I hope everyone has taken a few days out to kick back and make the most of the holidays this year. I have had a very special Christmas with family and friends, which is what the season is all about, for me. I’m not a religious man and I don’t like enjoy the commercial hold that December seems to have over everyone but those few days over the Christmas period are still special to me and I hope everyone else has managed to enjoy them, too.
A big thank you to everyone who has read and helped to support my writing this year. My thoughts are always with you as we go into the New Year and 2014/2015 is no exception. Generally speaking, creativity is not rewarded or well-celebrated. I am incredibly fortunate to be able to do what I love with such freedom and for this I will always be grateful. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
December 27, 2014
3. Unknown Wonder
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
H.P.Lovecraft, ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’
It has become apparent that the Romantic Sublime is the form of the sublime that I have recognised up until now when��reading particular kinds of horror fiction,��linked as they are by the time period in which they appeared, the themes of the supernatural and the reliance of this sublime on art/literature as a means of being invoked. While interpretations of the sublime vary between schools of philosophy, critical theory, theology and ethics – to name but a few – it is the Romantic Sublime of the eighteenth-century��that invests importance in art, and, subsequently, literature,��as a sublime medium. My preoccupations are for contemporary instances of sublime horror, but it is��still noteworthy to examine more closely the relationship between the Romantic Sublime and Gothic fiction, if for no other reason that to better inform and reflect on any contemporary conclusions I might later come to.
Aside from the century in which they both rose to inception and the emphasis on art/literature as form, it is Gothic fiction’s soul that seems responsible for invoking the sublime in readers. By this, I mean the tropes that define the genre: terror, the supernatural, old gods,��castles, forests, storms��and ancient rituals, each serving to��imbue the grandeur, the otherworldliness, the unfathomable and the mystic associated with sublime. But what is it about these things��that suggest sublimity?
The sublime is evoked by vastness,��representations of the divine, and the unfathomable.��Whether it is an object, a concept or a geographical location – and almost��anything��can be sublime, under the right conditions��– it is the inability of the human mind to comprehend the��sight before��it that defeats it, in turn opening it up to that��which lies beyond thought or language.��In the context of Gothic fiction, it therefore appears that this kind of fiction is sublime because of the otherworldly and ultimately unfathomable qualities of the key elements that constitute it; towering castles, sprawling forests, irrevocable decay and the supernatural. These Gothic tropes are either too vast, timeless or alien for us to appreciate, and from this sense of the unknown springs the sublime.
I refer back to the above quote by Lovecraft, attesting to the nature of fear: “The oldest��and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Taken to its source, the same unknown that terrifies us can also take us beyond fear, and, to those open to reflection, the sublime state of mind that wells briefly into being when thought and language fails us. It is interesting to conclude that ‘the unknown’ seems the underlying link here, at least between the Romantic Sublime and Gothic fiction. Going forward to examine��contemporary sublime theories and��horror fiction, this will certainly be��something to consider.
It is also��interesting to note that Lovecraft identifies a marginal audience for readers of weird fiction, attesting in ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’ that “The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily routine to respond to tappings from outside.” These are sentiments echoed by French theorist Jean-Francois Lyotard, when he writes of the sublime that it “cannot be taught… it requires a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ to detect the presence of this ‘inexplicable’ and ‘hidden’ phenomenon.” For the English Romantics, attuned and open to the imagination, the sublime began to��denote a realm of experience beyond the rational or the measurable, arising chiefly from terrifying and awe-inspiring natural – and supernatural – phenomena.
Unknown Wonder
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
H.P.Lovecraft, ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’
It has become apparent that the Romantic Sublime is the form of the sublime that I have recognised up until now when��reading particular kinds of horror fiction,��linked as they are by the time period in which they appeared, the themes of the supernatural and the reliance of this sublime on art/literature as a means of being invoked. While interpretations of the sublime vary between schools of philosophy, critical theory, theology and ethics – to name but a few – it is the Romantic Sublime of the eighteenth-century��that invests importance in art, and, subsequently, literature,��as a sublime medium. My preoccupations are for contemporary instances of sublime horror, but it is��still noteworthy to examine more closely the relationship between the Romantic Sublime and Gothic fiction, if for no other reason that to better inform and reflect on any contemporary conclusions I might later come to.
Aside from the century in which they both rose to inception and the emphasis on art/literature as form, it is Gothic fiction’s soul that seems responsible for invoking the sublime in readers. By this, I mean the tropes that define the genre: terror, the supernatural, old gods,��castles, forests, storms��and ancient rituals, each serving to��imbue the grandeur, the otherworldliness, the unfathomable and the mystic associated with sublime. But what is it about these things��that suggest sublimity?
The sublime is evoked by vastness,��representations of the divine, and the unfathomable.��Whether it is an object, a concept or a geographical location – and almost��anything��can be sublime, under the right conditions��– it is the inability of the human mind to comprehend the��sight before��it that defeats it, in turn opening it up to that��which lies beyond thought or language.��In the context of Gothic fiction, it therefore appears that this kind of fiction is sublime because of the otherworldly and ultimately unfathomable qualities of the key elements that constitute it; towering castles, sprawling forests, irrevocable decay and the supernatural. These Gothic tropes are either too vast, timeless or alien for us to appreciate, and from this sense of the unknown springs the sublime.
I refer back to the above quote by Lovecraft, attesting to the nature of fear: “The oldest��and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Taken to its source, the same unknown that terrifies us can also take us beyond fear, and, to those open to reflection, the sublime state of mind that wells briefly into being when thought and language fails us. It is interesting to conclude that ‘the unknown’ seems the underlying link here, at least between the Romantic Sublime and Gothic fiction. Going forward to examine��contemporary sublime theories and��horror fiction, this will certainly be��something to consider.
It is also��interesting to note that Lovecraft identifies a marginal audience for readers of weird fiction, attesting in ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’ that “The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily routine to respond to tappings from outside.” These are sentiments echoed by French theorist Jean-Francois Lyotard, when he writes of the sublime that it “cannot be taught… it requires a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ to detect the presence of this ‘inexplicable’ and ‘hidden’ phenomenon.” For the English Romantics, attuned and open to the imagination, the sublime began to��denote a realm of experience beyond the rational or the measurable, arising chiefly from terrifying and awe-inspiring natural – and supernatural – phenomena.
The Other Side of Bethlehem
Originally posted on Pen of the Damned:
Soft caressing satin sheets the finest weave
laid out awaiting our grey mistress
today the surroundings a lowly cave
but tomorrow she says ��� it will be a palace���
for she is deserved of the world���s best
*
We shudder as she draws near
her greatness is in contrast to our lowliness
I behold her and see earth���s riches clear
etched in her skin, reflected off her eyes, in her touch
my mate is poised to rearrange all and such
*
Fearing that the perfumes and oils
do��not emulate her beauteous perfection
we like dogs in our groveling toil
have no ability to bark
we whimper at her approach in the dark
*
She kicks my mate across the rocky ground
���FOOLS don���t you know what is occurring
can���t you hear the angels��� grating sound?���
we had been too busy to listen to music
so heavenly, it would make���
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